C
artillery fell silent, Lee insisted that Longstreet press forward.
Longstreet reluctantly ordered his men, including those under the
command of General Pickett, to attack the center of the Union lines.
Deliberately, they marched across the farmland toward the Union
high ground. Suddenly, Northern artillery renewed its barrage. Some of the
Confederates had nearly reached the Union lines when Yankee infantry fired on
them as well. Devastated, the Confederates staggered back. The Northerners had
succeeded in holding the high ground south of Gettysburg.
Lee sent cavalry led by General James E. B. (Jeb) Stuart circling around the
right flank of Meade’s forces, hoping they would surprise the Union troops from
the rear and meet Longstreet’s men in the middle. Stuart’s campaign stalled, how-
ever, when his men clashed with Union forces under David Gregg three miles away.
Not knowing that Gregg had stopped Stuart nor that Lee’s army was severely
weakened, Union general Meade never ordered a counterattack. After the battle,
Lee gave up any hopes of invading the North and led his army in a long, painful
retreat back to Virginia through a pelting rain.
The three-day battle produced staggering losses. Total casualties were more
than 30 percent. Union losses included 23,000 men killed or wounded. For the
Confederacy, approximately 28,000 were killed or wounded. Fly-infested corpses
lay everywhere in the July heat; the stench was unbearable. Lee would continue
to lead his men brilliantly in the next two years of the war, but neither he nor the
Confederacy would ever recover from the loss at Gettysburg or the surrender of
Vicksburg, which occured the very next day.
Grant Wins at Vicksburg
While the Army of the Potomac was turning back the Confederates in central
Pennsylvania, Union general Ulysses S. Grant continued his campaign in the
west. Vicksburg, Mississippi, was one of only two Confederate holdouts pre-
venting the Union from taking complete control of the Mississippi River, an
important waterway for transporting goods.
VICKSBURG UNDER SIEGE
In the spring of 1863, Grant
sent a cavalry brigade to destroy rail lines in central
Mississippi and draw attention away from the port city.
While the Confederate forces were distracted, Grant was
able to land infantry south of Vicksburg late on April 30. In
18 days, Union forces whipped several rebel units and
sacked Jackson, the capital of the state.
Their confidence growing with every victory, Grant
and his troops rushed to Vicksburg. Two frontal assaults on
the city failed; so, in the last week of May 1863, Grant set-
tled in for a siege. He set up a steady barrage of artillery,
shelling the city from both the river and the land for sever-
al hours a day and forcing its residents to take shelter in
caves that they dug out of the yellow clay hillsides.
Food supplies ran so low that people ate dogs and
mules. At last some of the starving Confederate soldiers
defending Vicksburg sent their commander a petition say-
ing, “If you can’t feed us, you’d better surrender.”
On July 3, 1863, the same day as Pickett’s charge, the
Confederate commander of Vicksburg asked Grant for terms
of surrender. The city fell on July 4. Five days later Port
Hudson, Louisiana, the last Confederate holdout on the
Mississippi, also fell—and the Confederacy was cut in two.
U. S. Grant,
photographed in
August 1864
▼
“ It’s all my fault”
GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON THE
FAILURE OF PICKETT’S CHARGE
C. Answer
It cost a huge
number of sol-
diers and put
the South on
the defensive.
MAIN IDEA
MAIN IDEA
C
Analyzing
Effects
Why was
the battle of
Gettysburg a
disaster for the
South?
